We concluded our year with our annual Fall Program & Showcase Finale Event featuring presentations by 18 teams from 5 different program sites at the Newkirk Alumni Center at UC Irvine.

Bringing together nearly 100 middle school students from Yorba Middle School, Ralston Intermediate – Boys & Girls Club of Garden Grove, Jordan Intermediate – Boys & Girls Club of Garden Grove, Valadez Middle School in Placentia and Harbor Day School in Corona del Mar, the showcase featured 18 team presentations with the following teams coming out on top in the friendly competition & a new fan favorite award this year!

Crazy Coders

App Name: SCIVINCIMentor(s): Cristian G. & Lizette O.Team Members: Breanna, Jayleen, Breana, IanApp Description: Help the tiger cross the jungle by tapping on the screen to make him jump and avoid falling into a beaker full of chemicals! You can also get the bunny to the carrot by tilting your phone to avoid obstacles. If you touch an obstacle, you must answer a STEM related question to recieve another attempt to reach the carrot with one less enemy.Technical Components Used: Tilt sensor, buttons, clocks, audio

The Savage Pineapples

App Name: Earth’s FantasiesMentor(s): Cristian G.Team Members: Tatiana, Deanna, AlexanderApp Description: The story is about a boy/girl searching for her sister in different worlds while she/he is collecting powers. The worlds are fire, grass, ice, and water which is related to life and earth science. The players are answering randomized questions when touching pictures related to the theme in the world.Technical Components Used:Media players, data bases, canvas, image sprites, buttons, layouts, and photoshop

Day of the Dead Demons

App Name: Virus BreakoutMentor(s): Sarah N.Team Members: Emmanuel, Touissaint, Juliana, Angie, JillianApp Description: Tatum has accidentally downloaded a virus that has unleashed evil robots! Help Tatum prevent a robot apocalypse from endangering humanity any further! Follow him on his journey through four stages (within a computer, school, city, and outer space) as he tries to avoid encountering his enemies. Get caught by one, and you must answer a STEM question within 10 seconds to pass! Each stage will have questions related to a different STEM subject. Survive each level for its designated time limit, and you can move on to the next stage. But beware, if you fail to answer correctly three times, it’s game over! Once the four stages have been conquered, you will finally be able to destroy the source of the virus: a malevolent satellite roaming through space. If you damage it with 3 laser shots, you successfully help Tatum defend Earth! Good luck in overcoming this virus breakout!Technical Components Used: PiskelApp, an online pixel art creator, was used to create original sprites for the game, while Photoshop was used to edit other needed photos. Audio (background music and sound effects) from various online sources were also incorporated to improve the user’s engagement within the app. The team largely utilized lists in order to work around AppInventor’s screen limit, generally creating a list for each level from which other blocks would draw from.

Team Savage

App Name: Jungle Monster RunMentor(s): Lizette O.Team Members: Edwin, Alexxys, Rosa, JorgeApp Description: In our app the user has crash landed on an island. The user has to answer a variety of STEM questions to gather the plane parts (1 correct answer = 1 airplane piece). Once the user receives the airplane parts, they have to run across the jungle and avoid obstacles to the crash landing site to fix the plane! Be careful there are monsters on the loose!Technical Components Used: Audio, swipe and touch canvas, buttons, clocks, image sprite animations

Team Nguma

App Name: Body RushMentor(s): Bailey K.Team Members: Kevin, Dylan, JasonApp Description: You are a scientist trying to find a virus somewhere in your patient’s body to destroy it. You have been shrunken down to travel throughout his or her body. As you travel, you’ll learn about the virus and about the different body parts! You have limited time before the virus completely takes over the body part. So select your equipment and go!Technical Components Used: Database, audio, clocks, image sprites, canvas, buttons, lists, random number generators, control flow, conditional blocks

The 3 Biomes

App Name: Boundless BiomesMentor(s): Aman S.Team Members: Minh-Quan, Thanh App Description: The 3 Biomes team created the ‘Boundless Biomes’ application to increase the knowledge of a young audience about different types of biomes and the many animals that inhibit them. We wanted this application to be fun and easy to use, all the while being educational. We have many different aspects to this game. This game includes 3 different levels, which take place in different biomes (forest, ocean, and desert) and different animals that inhibit those biomes. Each level has its own challenges. For an additional challenge, we also included a trivia aspect to this game in which users can select to answer questions about different biomes and animals. Our goal was to create an environment where the user feels like they are in the biome that they are playing in. Therefore, we put an emphasis on audio and images. We created all the images ourselves using pixelating software to create an old, classical feel to the game. This is the type of creativity that we hope sets us apart from our competition. We spent our 10 weeks working hard on this application and hope you have fun learning from it!Technical Components Used: The team used a software called Piskel to create our own background and sprite images in a pixel form to create a classical feel to the game. We were inspired by games from older generations like Mario and wanted to be set apart from our competition using our creativity. Therefore, we spend a lot of time creating all the images that went into this application. We also carefully hand-picked audio files that created the illusion that the user was in the biome that they were playing in so that we could make it as life-like as possible. These audio sounds included background audio for forest, ocean, and desert biomes.

Sandwich Bagels - 3rd Place Winner!

App Name:Virus AttackMentor(s): Samantha N. & Anthony L.Team Members: Nathan, Dakota, My-ThanhApp Description: A game that teaches about viruses and molecules that can kill the viruses. This game includes a quiz and two levels of virus killing action!Technical Components Used: Audio, accelerometer, buttons, drag motion

Team Bleach

App Name: Planetary EscapeMentor(s): Shannon L.Team Members: Eliot, Trinh, Connor, LorenaApp Description: You are an alien that was on a trip to the newest planet in the galaxy. You got off your UFO and got knocked out from another alien species. Your UFO got destroyed in the process. Now you must go through the stages to find the parts of your UFO. Answer questions, defeat bosses, and get home!Technical Components Used: Databases, lists, pixel images, music and sounds, custom character creation

GAWD of Winners - 1st Place Winner!

App Name: Animal AdventuresMentor(s): John S.Team Members: Jillian, Victoria, Armando, Danny, GageApp Description: Animal Adventures is about the player character visiting multiple biomes and answering questions about animals from each one in order to make progress to the next biome.Technical Components Used: Database use for storing character information between screens, as well as storing the score between screens. Audio in some scenes for mood music, as well as success and failure sounds. Characters and animals are sprites which moves from spot to spot on the screen as questions are answered correctly or incorrectly.

Derpy Sunflowers

App Name: Derpy SpaceMentor(s): John C.Team Members: Richard, Daniel, Logan, AutumnApp Description: Derpy Space is an app geared for 1st and 2nd graders that teaches them some facts about space and our solar system! The player’s goal is to answer questions to build their own spaceship and go into space! Once the player has lifted off, they must avoid all the incoming asteroids as best as they can. Be careful, the longer you are in space, the faster the asteroids are!Technical Components Used: Database, sound player, images, animation, clocks/timers, orientation sensor, buttons

Technical Thunder Cows

App Name: Temple RaidMentor(s): Shawn P.Team Members: Dilan, Dylan, Riley, Kaden, AidenApp Description: Temple Raid is a side scrolling game where the player controls a hero that fights monsters through different stages to get the golden skull. Each fight requires the user to answer randomly generated math equations.Technical Components Used: Database was used to store various data, including the current monster on the screen and current stage background image. Media players were utilized on every screen for music, buttons to control movement of character, and text box was used to answer math equations.

Toxic Bubbles - 2nd Place Winners!

App Name: CharitablesMentor(s): Anshul S.Team Members: Carson, Lukas, Shaan, RichardApp Description: Nothing feels better than donating some hard earned money to the people in need. Do 4 different chores for your neighbor and earn money to donate to charity. ‘Charitables’ will get you addicted to its fun-filled STEM related games, so come check it out!Technical Components Used: We’ve designed the game to be functional on multiple screen sizes. We use databases to store the global money. We have fancy audio and 8-bit characters to make it look retro. We’ve also used lists, clocks, pop-ups, etc.

The Five Amigos - 4th Place Winner!

App Name: Market MayhemMentor(s): James D.Team Members: Alex, Grant, Peyton, Jack, PetraApp Description: Come Shop with us! Grab a shopping cart and pick up some fresh vegetables at the right price! We offer a variety of vegetables falling from above, catch the right vegetables to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Thank you for shopping with us, see you again soon!Technical Components Used: Database, audio, accelerator sensor, and graphics.
Additional Comments: As a team working together, we would like to make the world aware that food is being wasted at an alarming rate. Supermarkets throw out bad vegetables that are unable to be sold.

The Graffiti Cat Gamers

App Name: Monster Math GoMentor(s): Andrew S. & Max R.Team Members: Sierra, Javier, LeonApp Description: Monster Math Go is a mathematics-based educational app to teach elementary school kids addition in a fun way! The game consists of 10 levels with the player having 3 lives to complete them all. Like the popular app Pokemon Go, players are faced with a math problem and a monster to capture with three different balls (that correspond to answers) used to capture the monster. Balls can be flung towards the monster to capture it; if the answer is incorrect or if the timer runs out, a life is lost. But if the answer is correct, the player moves on to the next level. When all the lives are lost, the game is over, but if the player makes it to the last level and correctly answers the question, the player wins the game and the final score is shown. In both cases, players can go to the main menu or play again.
This app will surely be beneficial to students who want to practice their addition skills while on the clock, so we hope you see the educational benefits in it and enjoy the game!Technical Components Used: The technological components utilized were multiple timers (to account for screen changes and time limits when answering questions), movable images in the app, and buttons to switch between screens.

Champions

App Name: Swag MathematicianMentor(s): Sasha M., Manisha S., Zarin O.Team Members: Eric, Bryan, JesusApp Description: Swag Mathematician is an application designed to practice Mathematics with middle school students. It consists of two different level; one of the levels is dedicated for multiplication practices, and the other one will allow students to practice division. The game starts by showing an introduction screen and will give users two options: 1) start playing the game and 2) pull up the information page to learn how they can play the game. Once users press the play button they will be navigated to another screen will they’ll find a dice in the middle of screen, which let them roll the dice and start one of the Math practices by chance. If the dice rolls to multiplication, a new screen pops up and shows a Cheetah and bunch of animated answers on the screen. There are four buttons allowing user to navigate the Cheetah and to catch the correct answer based on the provided question. To make the game fun and more competitive we create Pacman characters and make them follow and catch the cheetah wherever it goes. As the time goes on and they answer more questions there will be more Pacmans appearing on the screen. Eventually if one of the Pacmans catch the cheetah, user loses and will be navigated to the level screen (the screen with dice) to play again or close the application. If they answer all the questions correctly, they win and will be navigated back to the level screen. If the dice rolls to division, a screen pops up and shows a basketball court, a basketball player and bunch of hoops with different answers in them. User supposed to answer questions (which will be displayed on top of the screen along with the current score) by making a fling movement on the ball. They should shoot the ball with their finger to the correct hoop and answers and once they answered all the questions correctly, they will get switched back to the level game.Technical Components Used: Database, audio, graphic, random integer generator, sensors, timers, procedures

The Anonymous

App Name: Everything JuiceMentor(s): Cher H.Team Members: Maryssa, Adam, RyanApp Description: It’s time for some refreshing juice! Join your celebrities on the beach, enjoy the flavor of summer while learning math all at the same time! Come join us.Technical Components Used: Database, Audio, Global Variables, AnimationAdditional Comments: We made more than 90% of our visual components from scratch!